Gautam Adani's group emerges biggest winner of city gas licences

According to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board, IOC on its own won rights to four cities. Bharat Gas Resources Ltd, a unit of state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL), won a licence for six cities, the same number for which Torrent Gas Pvt Ltd too made winning bids.

Billionaire Gautam Adani's group today emerged as the biggest winner of gas retailing licences, winning rights to selling CNG in 11 cities including Allahabad.'Adani won rights to retail CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in six cities on its own and another five in joint venture with state-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC), according to results of 48 out of the 86 cities that were bid out in the country's biggest city gas distribution (CGD) bid round.

According to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board, IOC on its own won rights to four cities. Bharat Gas Resources Ltd, a unit of state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd (BPCL), won a licence for six cities, the same number for which Torrent Gas Pvt Ltd too made winning bids.

State gas utility GAIL's retailing arm, GAIL Gas managed rights for three cities. When the bid round closed last month, IOC, BPCL and Adani Gas Ltd were the top bidders. Of the 86 cities offered for retailing of CNG to automobiles and piped cooking gas to households in the 9th CGD bid round, IOC bid for 34 cities on its own and another 20 in partnership with Adani Gas Ltd. Adani Gas on its own bid for 32 cities.

Petronet LNG Ltd, India's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) importer, sought to foray into CGD business by bidding for the licence in seven cities. Indraprastha Gas Ltd, which retails CNG in the national capital region, put in bids for 11 cities.

According to PNGRB, Adani Gas won rights to Surendranagar, Barwala, Navsari, Kheda and Porbandar districts in Gujarat as well as Balasore in Odisha. Its joint venture with IOC, Indian Oil-Adani Gas Pvt Ltd won Kannur in Kerala, Gaya in Bihar, Bulandshahr, and Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh.

IOC won Aurangabad in Bihar, Rewa in Madhya Pradesh and Jagtial in Telangana. In a statement, PNGRB said the 9th CGD Bidding Round was launched on April 12 for development of city gas networks for the 86 Geographical Areas (GAs) which includes 174 districts (156 complete and 18 part), spread over 22 States and Union Territories (UTs) in India.

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"Based upon the bids evaluations PNGRB in its 79th Board meeting held on August 3, approved issue of Letters of Intent (LoI) to the 18 successful bidders for 48 GAs," it said.

The regulator said bids for remaining GAs are being evaluated and outcome of the same will be announced shortly.